Thursday, November 13, 2014

Staunton, November 13 – Vladimir Putin
is proposing the kind of grand bargain to Barack Obama that Hitler proposed to
Neville Chamberlain and then to Joseph Stalin, in which the West would accept
Russia’s annexation of Crimea in exchange for Moscow’s cooperation on Iran,
according to Andrey Illarionov.

Chamberlain rejected that bargain
but Stalin did not. The Soviet leader’s agreement took the form of the
Molotov-Ribbentrop pact. But despite what Hitler promised that did not end his
demands, lead to peace in Europe or keep the German fuehrer from turning on his
Soviet accomplice.

Even as Moscow hopes to provoke Ukraine
into take military actions that will allow Russia to accuse Kyiv of having
broken the ceasefire, the Kremlin is working on broader plans, using its
aggression in Ukraine as the basis for getting those it still calls its Western
“partners” to sacrifice Ukraine in the name of some larger agreement.

As Illarionov points out, the exact
shape and dimensions of this proposal are still not clear.Roger Cohen of the “New York Times” suggests
it will take the form of “an exchange of Ukraine for Iran.” Aleksandr Lebedev
and Vladislav Inozemtsev say it involves the exchange of Western recognition of
the Crimean Anschluss for an end to Russian aggression in Ukraine.

Sergey Markov, who yesterday underscored
just how close Putin’s diplomacy reflects that of Hitler by talking about the
notion that the Baltic countries would not remain independent in the event of a
major war, said that Moscow would agree to the territorial integrity of Ukraine
as it existed before April 2014 in exchange for federalization of Ukraine and
making Russian a state language of that country.

But Illarionov argues that “Putin’s
strategic desires are much more ambitious” and include Western recognition of a
privileged position for Russia “at a minimum” over “the entire post-Soviet
space,” something that would mean that the West would agree implicitly if not
explicitly not to take any measures to defend the countries in it against
Russia.

Kazakhstan President Nursultan
Nazarbayev certainly feels that such an offer may be on the table, Illarionov
continues. In an unusual speech to his countrymen this week, he spoke of his “foreboding”
about the approach of “global tests” in the course of which “will be changed
the present architecture of the world” and in which “not all states will
survive” (http://lb.ua/news/2014/11/11/285684_predchuvstvie_nursultana.html).

If Obama and other Western leaders
don’t agree to his outrageous demands, of course, Putin and his regime will
accuse them of rejecting Putin “proposals” that should not have been rejected
because they would mean peace in our time and lead to the solution of other
international problems the West is concerned about.

The
Kremlin leader will then launch an even broader campaign against Ukraine before
stopping and renewing his call for a grand bargain. In short, Illarionov says,
those who think they can dissuade Putin by such an accord do not understand him
or the nature of his regime. He will see any such agreement as an indication of
weakness and simply up the ante in the next round.

That
is what Hitler did in the late 1930s; Putin must not have the chance to do it
now.